1. Field of the Invention
This disclosure relates to pieces of, and customizable mounting systems for, furniture, including freestanding furniture for housing televisions, stereos, computers, and other related electronic equipment, as well as for storage, bookcases, fireplaces, and benches.
2. Description of Related Art
Historically, mounting systems for furniture and associated shelving have required the systems to be secured to the studs in the wall to prevent tipping or pulling away of the furniture from the wall and to adequately secure the furniture. This often limited the placement of mounted furniture to particular spaces in a room or office where such studs were placed. Further, it often required drilling or bolting of the furniture to the wall or floor in such a manner that visually marred the floor or wall surface and limited any subsequent movement of the furniture. Alternatively, prior mounting systems for furniture prevented tipping of the furniture by utilizing a footprint substantially larger than that of the furniture being mounted and that often interfered with wall molding and would not allow the system to be flush with the wall.
Accordingly, there is a need for mounting systems for furniture that do not have the above limitations but rather permit furniture to be mounted in multiple places in a room or office, without reference to the placement of wall studs, such that the furniture can be readily moved within the room or office subsequent to installation and without marring the surfaces of the walls or floor. There is also a need for a mounting system for furniture that does not require a footprint larger than the furniture itself and that permits the system to be flush with the wall and not interfere with the wall molding, for example.
Further, prior mounting systems for furniture and associated shelving were limited to pre-selected designs and placement of the furniture pieces on such systems. This severely limited the design choices of the owner or use of such furniture.
Accordingly, there is a need for customizable mounting systems for furniture that do not limit the owner or user of the furniture to only one pre-selected arrangement of furniture pieces and accessories.
It is also known that electronic equipment is generally located and stored on some type of shelving system, console, stand or desk for convenient operation and use. For example, a home entertainment center (or stereo console) is a piece of furniture seen in many homes, which houses major electronic items, such as a television set, a VCR and/or DVD player, stereo components (such as an AM/FM tuner, multi-disc compact disc changer, record player, one or more cassette players and graphic equalizer), and cable or satellite television receivers. Furthermore, desks are often used in homes and offices to store computers, printers, phones and other associated electronic equipment. These electronics typically require some type of cords, cables and/or wires (which are generally referred to herein as wires) either interconnected with the electronics or connected to an electrical outlet. Typically, though, the electronics are spatially separated such that these wires are easily viewable and visually unappealing. In the alternative, large entertainment centers and desks were used to house all the electronics and hide the wires. Such entertainment centers and desks, however, were often very bulky and greatly contrasted with the appearance of the wall.
The invention of the flat panel televisions and computer monitors has substantially reduced the need for these large pieces of furniture. Furthermore, these flat panel televisions are very thin in comparison to the older, conventional CRT televisions, making them suitable for wall-mounting. As a result, smaller pieces of furniture can be utilized to house the remaining electronics.
Wall-mounting of televisions, however, has problems of its own. While flat panel televisions are much smaller than conventional CRT televisions, they are still very heavy. Thus, the flat panel televisions are typically mounted with large screws and mounted into studs on the wall. Furthermore, because the flat panel televisions is mounted to the wall, it is separated from the remaining interconnected electronics (e.g., cable box, DVR player, surround system, etc.) and lacking an efficient wire management system. Thus, visually unappealing exposed wires run along the wall from the flat panel televisions to these electronics.
Moreover, a wall is a permanent structure and provides no access points to hide the wires and run the wires within the wall. Therefore, to alternatively run wires within the wall (and thus hide the wires), the dry wall had to be removed, a wire management system installed (e.g., a conduit for running wires from the television down to the remaining interconnected electronics with openings at different points where electronic devices are located), and a new dry wall permanently installed over the wire management system. And since the dry wall is permanent, it can be very difficult to add or remove wires, requiring fishing the wire in or out of the different openings within the conduit. Thus, although the wires may run behind the wall to hide the visually unappealing exposed wires, this is a very costly, time-consuming, and difficult process, requiring significant structural and aesthetic changes to the wall in order to hide the wires and to access them again after they have been concealed.
Accordingly, there is a need for sleeker and slimmer furniture for housing modern electronics with an efficient design and system for managing wires.